The Misadventures of P.B. Winterbottom review

A new puzzle game on Xbox Live with a unique approach to the genre.

If you've ever wondered who ate all the pies, wonder no more. It was P.B. Winterbottom.

I know this, because an Xbox Live game told me, and what more reputable source of information is there?

The Misadventures of P.B. Winterbottom is a puzzle game revolving around P.B. Winterbottom and his love of pies. The story is told in a poetic fashion, a pastry personification if you will. You control P.B. on various stages, climbing, jumping and cloning your way around the platforms, to collect every last pie.

Cloning? Well, that's the key game mechanic. On each stage you can record a macro of P.B. performing an action. Using clones of yourself performing various actions is how you get all the pies before the time runs out. You might 'record' yourself swinging your umbrella. The clone will repeat this action ad infinitum. You can then run at your clone (or perhaps stand under it) and be launched by the umbrella towards the pies in the sky.

What starts out as a fun and simple approach to capturing a single pie out of reach soon becomes a mind twisting puzzler. You can clone yourself more than once, and you will find yourself needing a clone posse performing all sorts of actions in order to progress through some of the later stages. You might have one clone bouncing, and other clone running, whilst another clone jumps on a spring board so you can be launched somewhere else.

Aside from the puzzles (which certainly make the game challenging) it's the presentation that really shines here. Animated in a quasi-monochrome colour palette, and set in a Victorian styled time with steam-punk touches, the game really looks unique. Very well done, and a very nice change from the hyper-colours of other puzzle games.

If you were a fan of Braid, or like puzzle games in general, I really can recommend this one. The puzzles themselves are neat (if not hair pulling at times) the presentation is superb, and it's certainly something a little different.

And we've made it to the end without any jokes involving the NZ Police.